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User blog:Danixcalifornia/Specks
DISCLAIMER: This is a story I began quite a while back; therefore, as I'm sure you can tell, the characters' characters are a little outdated. Obviously creative liberties were taken as well. This is a story that's been sitting around in my head for awhile now that after some thought, I'd decided Degrassi characters would fit my vision for it the best. This is just the spine of it; I still have a lot of tweaking to do, but here's the basic presentation. As always, constructive criticism is welcome. PROLOGUE For a day that the overwhelming minority fortunate enough to remain would remember as the last day of peace and normalcy they’d ever know, nothing at the start of it could have foreshadowed the horrors to unfold. Not a single storm cloud was in sight to have tipped off witnesses of any impending doom. It was a deceptively beautiful day unlike any other. The sky cloaked the secrets of dark days to come in a cavalierly perfect shade of azure blue, chirping birds flitted in the warm breeze occasionally swooping down towards the streets for scraps careful to not be trampled over as they strategically toiled around the heavy strides of citizens going about their daily lives wrapped up in the hustle and bustle of Toronto life. The sun shone magnificently bright to illuminate rooftops fixed upon quaint suburban architecture. It was early enough that many people still lay in the luxurious comfort of their warm beds completely oblivious to the real life nightmare that would soon upend their lives before sundown, when everything that defined human civilization would collapse in a puff of dust never to leave behind a trace of evidence that it ever existed. If survivors were to speculate about what the cause behind the global epidemic to reduce the human population by more than seventy percent was, nobody would be able to give a definitive consensus. You’d hear a myriad of theories spread out across a war-torn globe linked together only by a single endemic more cataclysmic and devastating than anything the world had ever seen in all 5000 years of it’s recorded human history. Perhaps theists would speculate it had been the endless cycle of the human race taking the precious quality of life for granted for far too long that finally drove the higher forces to bring their iron fists down upon the world in a mass cleansing of its unappreciative inhabitants. Perhaps those with a more misanthropic outlook on the world would theorize that humans in their gradual destruction of their own homeland had finally outdone themselves in their careless machinations of unwittingly speeding up the due date of their inevitable demises. But the particularly disillusioned remainder of the fallen population bereft of any care left to give would simply arrive at a resigned acceptance of that such is what life just is now and the particulars no longer matter. When you reach a point that which you are staring in the face the end of human civilization as you know it, the many mysteries of the universe once subject to a host of hypotheses pondered by humans from their cozy bubbles of privileged bliss no longer hold the magnetism they once did; very few things at all hold the wonderment that they once had. For the day you are hit with the crippling realization that you are only but a speck on the universe - and when the protections from your safe net are cut away to leave you exposed to the full spectrum of the many dangers it holds - it is then you truly understand the expendability of your life as your mortality hangs menacingly salient in the air. The appeal of life’s treasures falls away with the collapse of civilization until all that’s left is the carnal instinct of survival. Emotion, ethics, weakness, and hope all larger than an unforgiving reality not fit to sustain them become liabilities. Whether it was inevitable or not, human-induced or not, there was one thing everybody could agree upon; the how’s and whys stopped mattering long ago after the devastating carnage swept the world and away with it, all quality of life that left the once robust human race, no longer in its prime, no longer thriving, a whisper of what it was. PART ONE: THE DAWNING ZOE RIVAS June 15, 2015: "Just thirty minutes left and I'll be free." Daydreams of summer sun, hot sand, crystal waters, cute sundresses, and the potential for titillating romances preoccupied sixteen year old Zoe Rivas' thoughts as she kept an eye trained on the clock ticking closer towards summer break with every passing moment. She could hardly contain her excitement of what was to come. Her teacher had her back turned towards the class twenty-minutes deep into the most long-winded lecture about the French Revolution - or something of the equally boring sort; she honestly wasn't sure as she hadn't been paying the slightest bit of attention after all - and opportunity presented itself to the brunette as she whipped out her phone to risk sending a text, strategically holding her phone under her desk to conceal it from prying eyes. PARTY AT MY PLACE LATER TONITE. BRING EVERYONE THAT'S ANYONE '-Z ' A couple minutes past before the barely audible pings from her phone began in succession alerting her to that many of her recipients had already RSVP'ed. The corners of her glossy lips turn up into a Chesire-cat smile, thoroughly pleased with herself. The teacher hadn't even turned around once to investigate the noise. Either she didn't hear it or didn't care. If she had, she knew who the source was, and like everyone else in this school, decided against initiating a losing battle. In this school, student or teacher - it didn't matter - nobody challenged Zoe's authority. Not with the stardom she still carried like a banner to be paraded and the connections on her dad's side too frightening to mention. He was a dead-beat loser that checked in no more than twice a month, and sometimes, if he felt like it, left her and her mother a fat cheque to compensate for the time lost. But he also had ties to the Hell's Angels that kept most people compliant and placating. Between her fame and presence of threat, Zoe Rivas carried herself with a powerful irreverence and aura of control that most people were wise enough to let it be. It had been three and a half years since she first stepped foot into the halls of Degrassi high school. Even entering as a notoriously known celebrity and socialite, she could hardly believe how easy it was to claim dictatorship over the student body. Initially, she had balked at the idea of attending a public school. A person of her stature surely belonged with only the most prestigious that Canada's elite had to offer, but one mere incident on the set of the smash teen hit West Drive had culminated in the collapse of Zoe’s career and in extension of that, the Rivas’ now unreplenishable milk pot. Suffice to say, Zoe’s career simply never recovered. Soon the star pupil of the hit show that had elevated her to the fame and fortune she still managed to milk every last drop that remained of found herself and her mother living paycheck to paycheck most of the time. So, when Zoe’s mother pulled her daughter out of her prestigious boarding school and co-opted to enroll her in a public school instead, the thunderous tantrum Ms. Rivas had to endure from her spoiled daughter only validated her in her decision. Her hope that having her daughter coexist with what she liked to call “commoners” may help humble her conceited daughter, whom from years of stardom and a developed penchant for the finer things in life had been instilled within a great measure of inflated self-importance, was met in vain. Although Zoe quickly adjusted to public school, her ego grew as massive as ever. The student body clambered to her, eager to be friends with the glamorous actress responsible for bringing infamous mean girl icon Gatsby Garcia to life. As it happened, there were only three people that Zoe deemed worthy enough of her time and attention: Lola Pacini, a pretty, but somewhat air headed cheerleader in addition to the daughter of a wealthy CEO with powerful connections, which of course, only helped her chances of being accepted into Zoe Rivas’ elite posse. It was her sweetly submissive nature that had first drawn Zoe to the candy-color-haired girl, however. She had instantly glimpsed the perfect lapdog ripe for manipulation and grooming. Shay Powers, daughter of two successful lawyers, and a lawyer in the making herself, on the other hand was a force to be reckoned with. Intelligent, opinionated, and headstrong; sharp-tongued and able-bodied, Shay was no target for manipulation, but she was the the ideal enforcer for Zoe to add to her arsenal. Finally, there was Frankie Hollingsworth, daughter of a politician and as it stands, the wealthiest girl in the school. There was the minor detail of her being the little sister to Zoe’s estranged ex that didn’t quite sit right with Zoe initially, but Frankie’s immaculate wealth and social status - and more specifically, the fringe benefits that came along with the territory of being her friend - far outweighed that minor complication in Zoe’s eyes. Although Zoe had dated Frankie’s brother for a few months and the instant fizzling out of their brief passion-filled tryst - courtesy of some Perez Hilton wannabe swooping in and consequently sweeping the object of Zoe’s affections off his feet in the process - left the brunette still nursing a broken heart; nevertheless, less than a year later, Frankie Hollingsworth was walking in step with Zoe and her posse down the halls like they owned them. The end result was a dynamic trio that god himself, as Zoe would say with unmatched confidence, could not tear asunder. Between the four girls, she and Frankie were the closest. Where ever Zoe was, Frankie was never far behind. Shay and Lola, on the other hand, grew more independent from Zoe once Frankie began filling up most of Zoe's time, albeit they themselves figuratively fused at the hip. Shay and Lola had been best friends since kindergarten and not even their ring leader could turn them against each other when she wanted to. Now, three years later, Zoe had an inseparability unlike any other she had ever experienced with the three girls. In a lifetime cycle of people coming in a flurry of suddenness and going just as quickly, Lola, Shay, and Frankie were the ones to stay the longest and none of them could ever know just how much it meant to Zoe. No longer were these girls vessels for her to control and manipulate for her own gains and amusement, but the people closest to her since as long as she could remember. With the exception of her mother, in fact, Lola, Shay, and Frankie were probably the only three people Zoe genuinely cared for at all. She had already began mulling over the itinerary she had mapped out for the five of them to do over the break. Little did she know that later that evening, the charmed life she led would soon come to a close to introduce in its place a hell on Earth insurmountable to anything she could ever conjure in her wildest nightmares. Later, when all was lost, she would look back on that day as one that truly encompassed the meaning of mass deception for while her mind was preoccupied with frivolous daydreams of summer vacation amid a gorgeous summer afternoon, unbeknownst to her, the world was hours shy of mass decimation. The day the earth bled red and birthed a new world order that would devastate what remained of the world’s scorched remains was one nobody saw coming, but especially the privileged Zoe Rivas. Category:Blog posts